Day 14 - Boston Freedom Trail and general exploring

No alarm this morning - yay, a big treat. We wandered down to our favourite diner, Thorntons, which was packed so we had a short wait before we got a table. It is always busy with a line up of people waiting - a sure sign of a great establishment! Looking for more "normal" food today, we both went for some oatmeal with fruit (bananas, strawberries and blueberries) and it was yummy. To ensure the perfect cup of tea I even brought my own Lipton tea bags - ha ha.

We did a bit of make-up shopping for ourselves and those who had put in orders, dropped it back at the rooms and then set out to walk to the Boston Common - about 35 minutes away. Did I mention that it was really cold, blowing a gale, overcast, and generally freezing? It reached a top of 6 degrees today but I believe the wind chill brought it down to 3 (or so my ap told me). We were rugged up but had to hang onto our beanies to stop them from blowing away. Regardless, if is still a lovely place to walk around and we enjoyed our walk.

When we got to the common we grabbed a map of the Boston Freedom Trail (thanks for the tip Joan!) There is a trail of red bricks to follow and, with the help of the printed guide, we followed the trail and stopped at many of the various historical monuments, buildings, and sites. Carly walked, I talked, and we explored and examined the pioneer history of the mighty USA. 

When we reached Faneuil Hall (an old meeting house that has now become a market), we paused for lunch (almost linner) at a restaurant recommended by our guide from yesterday, Frankie. I forgot to tell you about Frankie. He often spoke in the first person. When we got on the bus he told us Frankie would not be using the microphone as there was only a small group. We kept waiting for some other guide to come on the bus...until we realised he was Frankie. Carly loved the way he said "forget about it" in his Boston accent. Anyway, back to our lunch. Frankie recommended this restaurant for their pot roast and as we were in search of "normal", pot roast sounded good to us...and it was...actually it was better than good, it was amazing.

We continued on the trail and found ourselves in Little Italy, the neighbourhood where you can find Mike's Pastry, the most popular cake shop you've ever seen. It was packed...I'm talking at least 80 people lined up inside with more outside. Well, we lined up and we were rewarded - we bought a Boston Cream Pie (actually it is cake with a custard layer inside and chocolate icing) and a Pecan Caramel Cannoli (after all Mikes is the "Home of the Cannoli"). They were dinner and they were awesome!

Our last subway ride back to the hotel and it was another early night with a couple of TV movies, a final pack of the suitcases, all ready to head off to the Big Apple tomorrow.